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Project Entry by oriskany

Poland - 1939 (80th Anniversary Prep)

August 4, 2019

Tutoring 6

Skill 7

Idea 6

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My friend Piotr ( @yavasa ) and I are taking a look at Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, using Panzer Leader, first playtest and demo game.

We’ll be live on Twitch in about 45 minutes!

8PM UK time, 3PM US East Time

Sitrep Podcast Twitch Channel

Just a few pics from today's game ...

Ah, the "mighty" German Panzerwaffe of 1939. We're looking at about 40 tanks here, roughly one battalion, or about 1/8 of 1st Panzer Division's armored fighting power.

Yavasa gets bold, wiping out a platoon of "Pioniere" assault engineers while they were still in my trucks. The nearby platoon of SdKfz 231/6s tried to break up this tankette attack, but failed.

The Germans invest Polish tanks, and set up for their set-piece assault on the second Polish objective hex.

The German assault begins in earnest, with infantry guns, mortars, and 7.5cms on PzKpfw IVs. But Yavasa is feeding in reinforcements into the battle, and close-assaulting German PzKpfw IIs originally used to spot the Polish defenders. Yes, German tanks are burning, and Polish cavalry are involved. This DID happen (German armored recon if memory serves), and CAN be successful if done carefully under the right circumstances.

We got as far as Turn 5. Yavasa has definitely picked up this game! And I'm pretty sure if this game had gone to completion we'd wind up with a 4-3 Polish win.

Here's one that got missed on the original roll out ... you can't have a Poland 1939 campaign without some Stukas. Sadly for me (German player), Yavasa was using his light tanks pretty aggressively. Note these two platoons of tanks rolling toward by captured objective hex in Jezów. Hence, I was forced to use my limited Stukas to secure my flank and rear, rather than kicking in the front door toward more objective hexes further north.

So we only got five turns through what’s normally a ten-turn game. No worries, this was just a demo game / tutorial. We hope to come back and do some more at a later time (schedules permitting) to continue our 80th Anniversary Commemoration of the 1939 campaign and the start of World War II.

We might set up a forum thread post rather than a project page, so both me and Yavasa can enter materials / photos / screen shots / battle reports, etc.